Happy

by Chris Scully

  Peter’s confusion cleared. Was that her problem? She was worried what her friends thought? He’d known it was only a matter of time before those rumors started to fly: a single man his age, living with his parents. His palms began to sweat. If she only knew. At least he could reassure her it wouldn’t be an issue with Louie. “He’s just a friend, Ma.”

  She crossed herself again. “His poor parents. No wonder they spend all their time in Greece. You should not see him again.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I will,” Peter replied without thinking.

  She slapped him.

  The shock of it hurt him more than the actual touch. He hadn’t been belted since he was seventeen years old and had gotten careless with the swear words.

  “Oh, Panagiotis,” she cried, immediately reaching out an arm. “I—”

  Instinctively, Peter reared back. Her face crumpled then, and she burst into tears, throwing herself against his chest, begging his forgiveness. Peter stood motionless. Were the tears real or part of a ploy to garner sympathy? Lord knew she’d done that once or twice before. But this time he didn’t care.

  As the shock wore off, anger took its place. He loved her, but she’d gone too far this time. You know what, Ma? he wanted to shout in her face. If that’s what you’re worried about, you’re too late. I’ve kissed a man. I’ve already had another man’s cock in my hand. And I liked it.

  But of course he couldn’t say that. It would kill her. And it didn’t matter anyway. Nothing of any real consequence had happened with Joe. And it had been years since that one time with Jason. There was no sense in bringing it up now.

  He took a deep breath and grasped her by the shoulders. “This has to stop, Ma,” he said carefully. “I’m a grown man. You’re stifling me. You can pick my girlfriends. You can even pick my career. But I’ll be damned if I let you pick my friends.”

  He spun on his heel and stalked away. He was tempted to walk right out and keep on walking until he was as far away from this place as possible. But he had friends waiting for him. He slowed and took a deep breath in an effort to calm down before he returned to the table. Apparently it didn’t work, because Louie took one look at his face and tried to slide out of the booth. “It was nothing,” Peter assured him, quickly blocking his exit. “Just some mix-up with a vendor.”

  Louie’s eyes called him a liar. “I should go,” he said.

  “Why? Look, the spanakopita is here.” Peter noticed the golden brown spinach pie hadn’t been touched in his absence.

  “Peter,” Louie grumbled. “Don’t make a fuss.”

  “You’re the one making a fuss. I ordered this for you. Eat.” Peter slid onto the bench seat, which forced Louie to move back. He huffed in defeat but left a wide berth on the seat between them. Peter immediately closed the gap in case Louie tried to escape again, and began doling out wedges of spanakopita.

  Louie’s eyes narrowed in warning as their hips touched, and he pulled away, but he couldn’t go far. In the end he ended up crowded against the wall, silently poking at the spanakopita with his fork.

  “Everything okay?” Adam asked, breaking the awkward silence.

  “Fine.” Peter raised the back of his hand to his cheek. She hadn’t really hit him hard enough to leave a mark, but he still felt as though he’d been branded. He signaled Annie to bring another round of beer. He had to work in another couple of hours, but if he ever needed a drink, it was now.

  “I don’t get it. Why does your mom have such a hate-on for Louie?”

  “I’m gay,” Louie said softly, not looking up from his plate.

  Joe frowned. “I don’t get that kind of reaction.”

  “She, ah, doesn’t know about you guys,” Peter mumbled into his beer, unable to look his friends in the eye. He might have neglected to mention it to his family.

  “Peter!” Adam exclaimed.

  “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Louie said with a shake of his head. “It’s me. The fact that I’m gay. In the Orthodox Church, it’s not only a sin, it’s a perversion in need of correction.”

  Joe snorted. “This coming from the country that practically invented homoeroticism. Naked Olympic games? Greco-Roman wrestling?”

  Louie cracked a smile. “I know, right?”

  “It’s a different world,” Peter explained, focusing his attention on stripping the label from his new beer bottle. That rock was back on his chest; it might have eased up for a few hours, but it never went very far. This time it felt like the size of a boulder. “This is a church that still frowns upon marrying outside the faith.”

  “Coming out was almost as hard for my family as it was for me,” Louie added. “Maybe harder. Even if my parents accept me, even if my priest accepts me, there are other factions who don’t. Peter’s parents and mine know each other. They go to the same church. They’re all part of the same community. People talk. Gossip.”

  People like his mother. Peter turned and looked Louie in the eye. “And you’re okay with that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s the way things are. Do I like it? No, of course not. But I’m not going to undo two thousand years of theology. All I can do is live my life in a way that makes me happy and hope that things will change in time.”

  Peter swallowed. What would that be like? To do what you wanted? What made you happy? He didn’t even know what that was. He lost himself in thought, letting Joe and Adam and Louie carry the conversation as they ate.

  Peter finished his second beer and debated a third. But the afternoon in the sun must have dehydrated him a bit because he was already feeling a slight buzz. He switched to water. At some point, he draped his left arm along the low backrest behind Louie’s shoulders. The tips of his fingers might have even brushed Louie’s neck occasionally, entirely by accident. There. Take that, Ma, he thought. He felt her eyes boring into him from the opposite side of the restaurant, but he didn’t care. He refused to look her way.

  Actually he couldn’t look her way because he was far too mesmerized by the play of lean muscles in Louie’s arms every time he lifted his beer or his fork. He wore another sleeveless shirt, and it showed off wide golden shoulders and the tufts of dark hair at his armpits.

  He and Louie both wore shorts, and every time one or both of them shifted, Peter was vividly aware of the gentle friction of hair-roughened leg against his own. And there seemed to be a lot of shifting to his muddled thinking. The sensation was so intriguing, his mind unwittingly began conjuring up thoughts of how that might feel in other places. Like say two hairy chests rubbing together. No, Louie’s chest had been smooth. Except for the few hairs that encircled his belly button and disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts. Peter had had a good look earlier today. Twice. Did Louie wax? Or shave?

  “Still with us, Pete?”

  “Huh?” Peter jerked out of his brain fog to find everyone staring at him.

  “Where did you go?” Adam asked. His expression was innocent, but for some bizarre reason Peter had the feeling he knew exactly where his mind had been. His face grew hot.

  “Sorry. Daydreaming. Plotting my revenge on the courts. What did I miss?”

  “I was just saying that since Louie is apartment hunting, you should go with him—vet the neighborhood before he moves in and discovers a crack house on the corner. But it seems you’ve already got that covered.” The teasing glint in Adam’s eyes made Peter uneasy.

  “You don’t have to,” Louie was quick to say. His jaw was tight, his voice clipped. As close as he was, Peter felt the tension radiating off the other man.

  He was angry.

  Shit. A flood of uncontrollable panic rushed through Peter’s gut. Things had been going so well, and then his mother had to ruin it.

  “I don’t mind,” Peter insisted. “Really. It’ll be fun.”

  Louie looked like it would be anything but fun for him. He mumbled some excuse about having to leave, and pointedly got to his feet.

  With a quick glance at his watch Peter realized
he needed to run home and shower and change or be late for work. “Me too.”

  With promises to get together on the next game night, Adam and Louie exchanged numbers and they parted on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Louie declined Joe’s offer of a ride in favor of walking home, but before Peter could say he’d tag along, he was off with a final wave.

  He turned to chase after Louie, but Adam’s hand on his arm stopped him.

  “Be careful, Peter,” he warned.

  Peter blanked his face. “Of what?”

  “I think you know,” he replied cryptically before rejoining Joe.

  A feeling of unease coiled in Peter’s belly. He pushed it aside and chased after Louie.

  Louie was several blocks ahead of him, clearly still pissed, and Peter had to jog to catch up. He was slightly winded when he reached him. How sad was that? He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know the other man was angry. “I’m sorry about my mom,” he ventured. “The way she acted.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for other people, Peter. They’re from a different generation. I can take it. But don’t ever use me like that again.”

  “Like what?”

  Louie stopped and glared at him until Peter felt his face heat. “The touching? The arm around the shoulders? I’m not some sideshow attraction to be trotted out when you feel like making a statement.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?” Louie shook his head and kept walking. “If you want to rebel, do it some other way.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t using you. Honest.”

  “No?”

  Peter saw the trap too late. He couldn’t very well admit the alternative: that he’d liked feeling Louie next to him, and touching him—that he’d been so comfortable it had just happened. “I was a little buzzed,” he hedged. “And okay, maybe there was a small part of me that wanted to tick her off. She thinks you’re going to ‘rub off’ on me.”

  “I don’t think it works like that, Peter.”

  “I know that.”

  Louie shook his head and began walking again. At least this time he set an easier pace so Peter could keep up. After another minute or two of silence, Peter ventured the question that had been on his mind the last hour. “Was it like that for you when you came out? Is that why you left?”

  Louie considered the question. “Not entirely. Yes, I knew it would be impossible to stay in the neighborhood and be myself. But I also needed to get away and be my own person—regardless of everything else. You know how it can be with family—they mean well, but sometimes you get so tangled up in it, in what they want, that you can’t ever get free.”

  Peter’s breath caught as Louie’s words registered. Tangled. That was the perfect word for it. He was tangled. Only he’d stopped trying to get free. The jealousy caught him off guard. Louie had done at eighteen what he still couldn’t. “No regrets, then?” he asked.

  “I won’t lie—it’s been tough. It’s taken me a long time to accept who I am, but now that I have, I can’t see any other way. I’m not going backward for anyone. I’d like to marry someone I love. And maybe even have kids one day—”

  “You want kids?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But if it feels right, yeah. Who knows? But how can I be any sort of partner or father if I can’t even be true to myself? If I can’t be… authentically me?”

  Peter’s head spun. He didn’t know why. Joe talked all the time about having kids with Adam, like it was an easy thing. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t heard it before—this crazy idea that you could have everything you wanted and not have to sacrifice a thing. But for some reason, it resonated more coming from Louie. Maybe because Louie was so much like him.

  “So, you never considered… keeping it on the down low?” he asked carefully.

  “Staying in the closet, you mean?”

  “No, just being more discreet.”

  “I’m not exactly waving the rainbow flag here, Peter.” Louie snorted. “But I sure as hell am not going to settle down with a nice girl from the neighborhood and get off once a month with random hookups. That’s for guys like Nick Santos, not me.”

  Peter slammed to a stop on the sidewalk. “Nick? What about Nick?”

  Louie turned around, his head tilted to one side. “You know him?”

  “He married my—a girl I used to date. I went to their wedding.”

  Louie’s eyes widened before falling to the ground. His olive complexion paled. “Oh. Never mind, then.” He spun on his heel and began walking again, forcing Peter to trot after him. Surely Louie wasn’t implying what Peter thought he was implying.

  “They had a baby last year,” he said.

  “Oh.” Louie sped up.

  “Hey.” Peter grabbed Louie by the arm and spun him around. “Are you saying… Nick is gay?”

  Once again Louie avoided making eye contact. “Forget what I said, okay? It’s none of my business. Who am I to put a label on someone?”

  “Then why even suggest it?” Peter pressed. “You and Nick dated?”

  Louie licked his lips nervously. “Not dated,” he mumbled. “Despite the nickname, I was so deep in the closet in high school you would have had to pry me out.”

  “Then what?” he demanded.

  “This is obviously freaking you out. Are you sure you want to hear this? It was a long time ago.”

  No, Peter wasn’t sure. But he had to. He nodded, braced himself.

  “We hooked up a few times in senior year.”

  Peter reeled. “Jesus.”

  “Look, it’s no big deal. Some guys like to fool around and experiment when they’re young. He was a horny teenager who wanted a hand job. It doesn’t mean he’s gay or bi.”

  There was more. Peter had the feeling Louie was hiding something. “But you obviously think he is. Why?”

  Louie scrutinized him closely. “I think the better question is why are you so worked up over the sex life of some guy who married your ex-girlfriend?”

  “Ex-fiancée, actually.”

  It was Louie’s turn to be blindsided. “Your ex-fiancée married someone else and you went to the wedding?”

  Peter shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about Elena right now. “We parted as friends. And you didn’t answer my question: why do you think he’s sneaking around?”

  Louie jammed his hands into his shorts pockets, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Okay, I might have seen something online recently,” he muttered.

  “Where?”

  “Peter, I may not agree with his choices, but I’m not going to out the man.”

  “But—”

  “Some people have secrets.” Louie’s eyes bore into his. “You just have to accept that.”

  SIX

  LOUIE ROSE early the next Saturday morning so that he could get his run in before Peter arrived at nine thirty to accompany him on his apartment hunt. He really shouldn’t be looking forward to it so much. Especially not after the way Peter had toyed with him last weekend. He had no time for people like that. But the memory of Peter’s warm body pressed against his, the brush of fingers on his neck, had haunted him all week.

  As disturbing as he found it to be fantasizing over Demetra’s boyfriend, there was also something liberating about having a straight friend. He could crush all he wanted and not have to worry about the drama and heartbreak of a relationship. He’d had enough of that for a while.

  He had just made it back home and was standing in the kitchen guzzling a glass of water before jumping in the shower, when the unmistakable groan of the front door opening filled the silence. The painted wood always swelled in summer and stuck in the frame a little. It took a good push to open or close, and ended up sounding like something out of a haunted house. It had given him away a few times growing up when he broke curfew.

  He ducked his head out of the kitchen, surprised to find Demetra creeping down the hallway with her shoes in hand.

  “Oh.” A wash of crimson licked up her neck into her cheek
s. “You’re up early.”

  Louie stared pointedly at her wrinkled sundress—the same one she’d had on last night when she left the house. “I could say the same about you.” Her bedroom door had been closed, so he’d just assumed that she’d come in late and was still in bed. Where had she been all night? With Peter? The thought made him frown. Shit, he had to move past that. “Someone had a late night.”

  “What are you? The curfew police? I get enough of that from Mom and Pop.”

  “Out with Peter?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  “The girls and I went out to a club. I ended up crashing at Steph’s house for your information.” With a haughty toss of her head, she marched past him on her way upstairs.

  He followed. “Dee, is everything okay with you and Peter?”

  Demetra halted with one foot on the stairs. “Sure. Why?”

  “It’s just that you guys don’t seem to spend much time together.”

  “And you’re such a dating expert?” she challenged.

  “No, I guess not.” He didn’t exactly have the best track record. If he was lucky, he’d gotten to see Aaron once a week, and always at Louie’s apartment or one of the safe places on Aaron’s list. The perils of dating a man in the closet.

  She fisted her hands on her hips. “Peter has a tricky schedule. It’s difficult. Our relationship is just fine. But, since you’re so interested, we have plans this week. Would you like to tag along? Would that make you happy?”

  No. It wouldn’t make him happy. The more he thought about it—and he thought about it far too much—they seemed like such an odd pair. He and Demetra might not be very close, but he knew his sister; she was flighty and immature, a little on the wild side. Peter was stable and responsible. Not her usual type. On the surface they had nothing in common.

  “You’re not… using him, are you?”

  Two spots of color flared in Demetra’s cheeks. “Nice! Real nice. That’s what you think of me?” She whirled around and ran up the stairs.

  “Dee, wait—” The slam of her bedroom door shook the house and made Louie wince.

  Some things never changed. He recalled similar dramatic outbursts when she was a teenager. Demetra had always been the black sheep of the family—the one to push the limits. Until he’d come out and secured that role for himself.